Tuesday Tidbit

I feel compelled to share today's reading from Anne Wilson Schaef's daily meditation book .

May 31

Acceptance

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living. (Simone de Beauvoir)

What a beautiful expression of the profundity of acceptance in our lives! Sometimes we are so busy rushing around that we do not take the time simply to accept who we are and what we have. Paradoxically, it is in that full acceptance that our lives then move on.

Our lives do have meaning...just as they are. It is our illusions that rob us of meaning, not our reality. When I accept my reality, I claim my strength and reasons for living.

My Life is what it is. It may change, and right now it is what it is.

Remembering To Live a Life That Matters

Trying to be a little more upbeat than yesterday, today. Yoga helped. So did knitting. So did eating Kraft Dinner and watching the season opener of The United States of Tara with First Born.

Still, it won't hurt to end my day with a positive reflection on the meaning of life.

About 5 and 1/2 years ago, a friend of mine gave me a framed version of this poem by Michael Josephson. I had stage three colon cancer at the time. I wasn't sure that I was going to beat it. Reading these words had a profound impact on my thinking at the time.

Still does.

(Note: I posted this material as text previously on this blog, but just came across it in video.)

Yoga Kid, Hearty and Me

My blog ponderings last night were related to "beach" novels and "meditation." Ironic perhaps, that today turned out to be the most beautiful day yet of 2011 so Yoga Kid and I headed for the beach, where we actually meditated, twice. I'm kind of thinking that meditating is something that I should stop reading about, and start doing.

Snippets from our beautiful afternoon:

Me: 
I'm trying to write lighter, happier posts on my blog these days.

Yoga Kid:
It's not working, you better try harder.

Me:
Sometimes I'm funny.

Yoga Kid:
Mostly not.

Me:
Damn.

We walk and talk for about thirty  minutes, then sit down on the rocks by water's edge, where I suggest that we look for heart-shaped rocks and sea glass. 

Me:
Maybe I'll write a book called Heart Shaped Rocks and Sea Glass and it will be about a crazy woman on stress leave who, in her obsessive search for heart shaped rocks and sea glass, finds her self.

Yoga Kid:
Probably not.

Nonetheless, we find ourselves some lovely specimens, including a very small heart shaped rock.

After a spell, we are completely overjoyed when Yoga Kid comes upon a heart shaped green piece of sea glass.

Yoga Kid:
A green heart! Green is the colour of the heart chakra! (Yoga Kid's yoga business is called Anahata Moon Yoga - Anahata is the sanskrit name for heart chakra).

Me:
You should take a really artsy picture.

Yoga Kid:
Let's balance Hearty (the green heart shaped piece of sea glass needed a name, so we gave it one) on a flat rock on a bigger rock right here and I'll snap the picture when the tide washes up towards them.

Half an hour, several wet running shoes later, and a couple of near losses of Hearty out to sea, and Yoga Kid finally captures it.

And from this beautiful afternoon, and this one photo, I realize what mindfulness is truly all about.

Me:
Thanks, Yoga Kid.

A Witless Wondering

For as long as I can remember, I have been absent minded. My husband called me the “absent minded professor” years before I became one. Until now, I hadn’t considered “overload" as a viable explanation. Perhaps it isn’t, but wouldn’t that be nice.

This week, I feel as though I’ve misplaced my wit, and I simply can't find it anywhere. On the best of days I struggle to write something uplifting, but I can almost always pull out some mild sarcasm out in an attempt to be humourous. The term “witless wonder” even comes to mind, right now. Not that I believe myself to be some kind of a wonder, but I sure as hell do spend a lot of time wondering.

In my experience, Merriam Webster comes in handy at these times of deep contemplation aligned with writer's block.

wit·less

adj \ˈwit-ləs\

1: destitute of wit or understanding : foolish

2: mentally deranged : crazy <drive one witless with anxiety — William Styron>

    wit·less·ly adverb

    wit·less·ness noun

I think Merriam is onto something. At the moment, I feel remarkably destitute of understanding as I experience intermittent episodes of witless anxiety. On the plus side, I’m trying hard not to feel foolish, and am nowhere near thinking myself mentally deranged. Crazy? Well, perhaps – but only in a good way.

If I really have lost my wit, the odds that I can find it are in my favour. I misplace things all the time, but I have uncanny luck in finding them. Take my car, for instance. I quite regularly lose it in parking lots. Once I lost it at Costco for so long (half an hour) that I actually cried with anxiety and frustration. I convinced myself that it had been stolen. It had not.

I own two watches, because I lose one or both on every given day. I should probably contemplate giving up the wearing of these ever disappearing wrist clocks. Perhaps I would adapt. Neither of our two daughters wear a watch, and they both seem to get by. They are of the cell phone generation, and see no need for ornamental timepieces. Unfortunately, when one has worn a watch on one's left wrist for forty of the past fifty years, one feels naked with it. At least this one does. It’s like when you are wearing your contact lenses, but keep pushing the glasses that you aren’t wearing up on your nose. Something is clearly missing. 

Yesterday was a banner day for watches and me. I couldn’t find either of the two for about ten minutes, then gratefully found the brown leather strapped one. My stress could have been avoided if I had realized that I was already wearing the silver watch. When I pulled off my sweater last night I found both of them, right there keeping time on my wrist. It scared me just a little, but made me laugh a little more.

Overall, I will continue to be hopeful about my odds of recovering the things that I have lost or continue to lose. Maybe this prescribed time off of work to take care of myself will reveal that being on overload adds to or explains my absent-mindedness. Maybe it won’t.

I may not currently have my wit or "my wits" about me." But surely to god they are around here somewhere.

Making and Taking a Vow

In her book Mindfulness and the 12 Steps: Living Recovery in the Present Moment, Thérèse Jacobs-Stewart suggests that we employ the Buddhist practice of creating a four-line verse called a gāthā as a way of asking a higher power to remove our shortcomings. This I can do.

Here's how to do it, adapted from Jacobs-Stewart (p. 104):

1. Open

Here I need to describe the shortcoming or "habituated pattern" that I am asking to be removed. I need to state it specifically and in the present tense. For example:

When I am afraid of running out of time...

2. Acknowledge My Reliance

In this second line, I need to place my needs and concerns in my higher power's care, or in the care of the universe, or whatever works for me. For example:

I vow with the help of my higher power...

3. Let Go of the Old

Next, I state my desire to let go of the root cause of the old behaviour. For example:

To let go of my anxiety and fear...

4. Invite in the New

Finally, I state my aspiration for the virtue or characteristic that I would like to cultivate in place of the defect. For example:

And rest fully and peacefully in the joy of the moment.

Alrighty then. I am going to take this idea for a test drive.

When I am afraid of running out of time...
I vow with the help of my higher power...
To let go of my anxiety and fear...
And rest fully and peacefully in the joy of the moment.

Wish me luck.

Mindfulness and the 12 Steps

We just spent an entire evening in our living room with a group of friends (and an adorable eight-week old baby) watching grown men beat on each other (Ultimate Fighting Championship). Watching UFC has become a tradition over the years. It started out as a male bonding experience for the fellows, but more recently, girlfriends, wives and even daughters have joined in. The fights tonight were rather boring, but the company was splendid. 

I hope it doesn't sound outrageous for me to be writing a post tonight about wanting to become more spiritual. Believe me, I am hell bent on figuring out how to get on and stay on a more spiritual path. I've been interested in the concept of mindfulness for years, and am attracted to the apparent parallels between mindfulness and twelve step recovery. Yesterday I opened a book that is actually blowing me away. 

The book is Mindfulness and the 12 Steps: Living Recovery in the Present Moment, written by Thérèse Jacobs-Stewart. Interestingly, we have had another book in our house for years that focuses quite similiarly on the topic of Buddhism and the 12 steps. I've tried to read that other book a number of times, but I just couldn't get into it, and I think it's because it was written by a man. Not that I have anything against male writers, but the words on the page of Kevin Griffin's One Breath of a Time just don't leap off the page and connect with me the way that the Jacobs-Stewart book does. I get her.

As I noted in a post a few days back, I am on the seventh step, and I desperately need some of my shortcomings to be removed. Jacobs-Stewart reveals that the Buddhist approach to dissolving "habituated patterns" of the negative sort is called "aspiration practice."

"Buddhist tradition points to an aspiration practice as a way of 'walking in the direction' of our desired change. We hold a strong intention to let go of the old, asking that our heart may open, blossoming into the new. We are inspired to make a vow, relying on our Higher Power to help us carry it through."

In other words, if we are going to ask that our shortcomings be removed, we need to "hold an intention to open to a new virtue in its place." I like this thinking a lot. It feels more productive to me than the way I have worked the seventh step in the past. It's late now, so I am going to sleep on this new information and continue this tomorrow.

By the way, this post is going up at 12:42 am so it will look like I missed posting for a day. But I didn't.

I Did It

My therapist is going to be so pleased with me. I took today as a vacation day and actually had a vacation day. It looked like this:

• I slept in.
• I did not get dressed all day.
• I did not do laundry, or clean my home office.
• I did not devote more than a total of five minutes to thoughts or actions related to my job.
• I did not feel guilty about any of the above.
• I Skyped with my sister and four-year-old nephew for one hour and seventeen minutes.
• I listened to a podcast on writing loglines for screenplays.
• I played around with my own screenplay outline.
• I starting reading two new books on mindfulness and twelve step recovery that arrived in the mail today.
• I let my husband make me an awesome tuna sandwich and tomato soup for supper.
• I checked in on Anderson Cooper in Cairo and he seems to be doing a little better today, but I still think he should come home.
• I had some really creative moments (a la screenplay) and came to some insightful realizations about what this writing and recovering and discovering gig is really all about for me, and what I need to do next.

I rocked this day.